Surely Hamish Macbeth, that confirmed bachelor, couldn’t actually be getting married?
To a policewoman as well, the popular Josie McSween whose regular visits to far-flung cottages
and crofts make her a welcome addition to the local police force. But maybe there is more to
all this than meets the eye, such as the letter bomb that set everything in train in the first
place...
This is the latest in the series and is a tangled tale of hitmen, bombs
and matrimony that seems a world away from the Lochdubh of the early
1980s as portrayed in Death of a Gossip (also reviewed
on this site). The story is as much about the wiles of Josie McSween
as it is about the murder, which loses some momentum as a consequence.
Hamish is at his least appealing here, grimly determined to give
his unwelcome new constable as little encouragement as possible.
He therefore does not appear as engaging as in the other titles,
which is a pity as he is one of the reasons for the books being
so entertaining. It will be interesting to see where the next book
goes after all this; one of the weaker entries in a strong series.
Reviews of other titles in this series